


Stuff Happens.

by LinguistLove_24



Category: Grey's Anatomy
Genre: F/F, Female Friendship, Implied Relationships, Jail Visit, Light Angst, Multi, Past Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-06
Updated: 2017-02-06
Packaged: 2018-09-22 10:04:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9603191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LinguistLove_24/pseuds/LinguistLove_24
Summary: Set sometime between 13x10 and 13x1l.-Unable to quiet her nagging conscience, Dr. Wilson uses a day off to check in on teenage inmate and former patient Kristen Rochester.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I write frequently for different fandoms on several pages, and though I'm current with the episodes and in love with the show, for some reason this is the first Grey's piece I've written that I felt like posting. I hope you guys like it! ;) 
> 
> Just a one shot. I may post some multi chapter stuff soon.

**Stuff Happens**

 

 

“Rochester,” the guard barked forcefully, eyes hard and vacant, lacking emotion as she fixed them to the middle of the teenager's face. “You have a visitor.”

 

 

“What?” Kristen looked up from the forever ingrained stain on the thigh of her orange jump suit which she'd permitted her gaze to become unendingly fixated on. Shock and surprise played themselves unhidden across her features, and the guard (whom she knew by name but hated with a burning passion so refused to respect) laughed ruefully.

 

 

“You heard me,” the elder nearly spat as she unlocked the cell. “Someone's here for ya.”

 

 

Could it be her mother? She'd not been to visit since Ellie – or Hannah, as she'd learned through third parties she'd been renamed – had been handed off to her. Kristen had stopped letting herself hope for or think of reconciliation when she'd written letter after letter home to which Emily evidently hadn't responded – until right now. After the day of the birth, when Robbins, Bailey, Wilson and Amanda the attorney had all gone home, she'd tucked away all the softness she'd allowed herself to show them, climbed back into her hard, dangerous, slightly manic protective skin.

 

 

“Who is it?” Kristen asked, voice emphatic.

 

 

“Well if you'd hustle your damn feet, we'd be closer to finding out, wouldn't we?” she admonished gruffly as she clamped a firm, rough grip around one of the inmate's biceps and led her to the visitors' room.

 

 

///

 

 

“Dr. Wilson,” Kristen stated, voice slightly intoned when she finally took in the identity of her mysterious visitor and situated herself on the long bench at one side of the visitors table, foot shackles clinking loudly with the exertion of it.

 

 

“Please,” Wilson said with a dismissive shake of the head, sections of the bun that had come loose from atop it bobbing up and down. “Call me Jo.”

 

 

“Okay,” she said flatly, eyes tracing over and over a distinct mark that a prisoner had no doubt found a way to carve into the tabletop. “Jo.” It felt weird on her tongue, wrong somehow. “What're you doing here?”

 

 

“I've a day off,” she started in explanation.

 

 

“And you'd nothing better to do than spend it in county lock up?” Kristen returned, words dripping with sarcasm. Previously, the surgeon would have found herself shaking in her boots with fear towards the girl, but because she'd had intimate moments with her during a time when she'd been most vulnerable, caused her to open herself up, let her walls down even for a little while – she found herself laughing at the utterance.

 

 

“Plently,” she responded. “But I wanted to see you.”

 

 

“Why?”

 

 

“Because,” Jo said with a contorted expression as if reasoning were obvious. “I wanted to see for myself that you were surviving in here.”

 

 

“I am,” she affirmed. “Barely. Some days I'm hanging on by a thread.”

 

 

Jo nodded knowingly. Life had been unkind to her countless times over, she kept under lock and key more than she'd share with anyone.

 

 

“Hey,” she said, trying to keep her voice erring on the side of bright. “Least they've got you back in gen pop.”

 

 

“I'd rather be in solitary,” Kristen said with mass distaste. “I feel alone around all these fuckers anyhow.” She'd come close in the time since she'd last been in Jo's presence to getting her wish. Having pushed all softness aside and stuffed dangerous emotions down to her depths, hardness had replaced it, short temper and fuse seeing many a near brawl break out. Slap-on-the-wrist warnings had begun to give way to more serious ones, and she knew she had to keep herself in check, was being watched like a hawk by Eldredge and her cronies.

 

 

“You're not alone,” Jo soothed. “I'm here, aren't I?”

 

 

“What, out of pity? I doubt you'll push yourself to come back.”

 

 

“No, actually,” she said emphatically. “Out of genuine concern. And I could definitely, if you needed me.”

 

 

“I don't fucking need _anyone_ ,” Kristen nearly spat, old manners returning in full force.

 

 

“Everybody needs someone,” Jo responded quickly, force on equal footing to Kristen. She saw more than she'd like to admit of her own person in the young woman situated opposite. The sentiment she'd just declared to her one she herself was still learning how to accept. “Even me.”

 

 

“Yeah, right,” the teenager responded. “You? The bad ass who helped rob a convenience store?”

 

 

“One and only,” she half smiled.

 

 

“Who d'you need the most?” Kristen asked after long minutes of heavy silence.

 

 

Jo pondered the inquiry for a minute, turned it over and over again within her mind wanting to give an honest answer. “My boyfriend, I guess, but I don't have him. Not now.” The situation still made her nauseous, but like Kristen, she never let on that she felt any other way than fine around most.

 

 

“Why not?”

 

 

“Misunderstanding got way out of hand,” she explained. “Punched a guy in the face and messed him up pretty badly thinking he was doing me a favour. Decided to take a plea bargain instead of waiting for trial.”

 

 

Kristen let out a low whistle. “So he's in my shoes, then?”

 

 

“Pretty much, yeah.”

 

 

“Was he a good guy, otherwise I mean?”

 

 

“Best I've ever had,” Jo said with conviction and a half smile. “Had his flaws, but so do the rest of us.”

 

 

“You should stick with him then,” Kristen mused. “'Til he gets out and finds his way back to you. God knows I wish my Mum would've.”

 

 

“She's not been to see you?” Jo questioned gently, knowing deep in the pit of her stomach what the answer would be.

 

 

“Nope. Won't even write me a letter.”

 

 

“I'm sorry,” she uttered nearly inaudibly. The words didn't seem appropriate, so she squeezed a hand, surprised the girl didn't jerk hers away as she hated sudden advances with a passion.

 

 

“No touching!” a guard barked authoritatively from across the way causing the doctor to jump and quickly abandon the gesture.

 

 

“It is what it is,” Kristen said with a shrug of the shoulders. “She wants a do over, a chance to raise somebody who won't fuck everything up. I have to accept it.”

 

 

“No you don't,” Jo told her, her own blood boiling over in anger at a mother she'd not even met. “Ellie is your daughter. If you'd been given the choice would you have done this to her? Stayed away from her? As a mother, do those actions sit well with you?”

 

 

“Of course they don't!” she almost roared.

 

 

“Well then, you've every right to be mad as hell at the way yours has so chosen to treat you.”

 

 

“I am!” Kristen admitted, simple words laced with sharpness akin to a knife's edge. “But I can't do anything. I've no way of finding out anything.” Hot tears made their way down her cheeks and she forcefully swiped at them.

 

 

“Nobody's told you anything?” Jo suddenly found herself even more disgusted with the coldness that seemed to blanket the world's most undeserving and vulnerable.

 

 

Kristen shook her head no. “Only her name.”

 

 

“What?” the surgeon asked, confused, brow arching.

 

 

“Mum changed it,” she said. “To Hannah. Before she left. She told Dr. Robbins she was going to call her Hannah.”

 

 

“Kristen,” Jo whispered empathetically.

 

 

“I used to like that name,” she spat. “Had a friend called Hannah, even. Now I hate it. I hate, hate, _hate_ it. I hate _her._ I fucking hate my mother!”

 

 

“I know,” Jo offered. “I don't blame you.”

 

 

“I don't know what she looks like, I don't know how she is, what her habits are, she doesn't even have the god damned _name_ I gave her. She's my baby and I don't even know her. I'm not her mother, I'm no one.”

 

 

“You birthed her,” Jo said. “Picked her up as soon as she cried and held her as long as you could. I'm not sure what you think that makes you, but it's definitely not no one.”

 

 

“Would it make me a bad person if I wanted to have another one once I find my way out of here?” Young eyes locked with older ones, genuinely ready to hang on her answer, softness peeking through the pain again.

 

 

“No,” Jo responded easily. “Not even a little bit.” She meant it.

 

 

“What makes you say so?”

 

 

“Sometimes people happen to stuff,” she started tentatively, recalling the former beliefs of Chief Bailey as they'd made the first trip over to county lock up knowing almost nothing about the personality of the patient they'd been summoned to treat. “And sometimes stuff happens to people. Some things are our own fault, some we have no control over, some storms are the result of the tough choices we've had to make. All of it kind of finds itself entwined, in the end.”

 

 

“Is it ever going to get better?” the teenager almost choked, Jo's heart breaking into about a thousand pieces.

 

 

“I'm not sure,” she answered honestly. “In my own experience, I can't say things have always gotten better, even easier. But they've continually changed.”

 

 

At that instant, loud declarations by grumpy, overworked guards were heard over the din of individual conversations signifying to inmates and loved ones visiting hours were over. Shackled feet of a teenager once again manoeuvred awkwardly in attempt to stand, surgeon following her lead. A guard had shuffled over and stood emotionless alongside waiting for goodbyes to come to a close so Kristen could be placed back into her cell.

 

 

“I don't know how to go about this,” Jo said uncomfortably. “Should I hug you, or?”

 

 

“No touching!” the guard barked again, seemingly happy at an opportunity to exercise excessive authority.

 

 

“Okay, okay, sorry.” She offered up her free hands as a gesture of peace and surrender.

 

 

“Thanks,” Kristen muttered. “For uh, y'know, comin' to see me and all. You didn't have to. I probably don't deserve it.”

 

 

“No problem,” Jo smiled warmly. “I'll try to do it again.” She watched sadly as the girl was pulled roughly by the arm further and further away from her, turned on her heel to make her own exit, doubled back when she felt she needed to.

 

 

“Hey, Rochester!” she bellowed, eyes twinkling at her effortless use of the girl's last name.

 

 

“Yeah?” Kristen questioned, squirming slightly out of the guard's grasp and half turning round to take in her face again.

 

 

“Just because stuff happens to people, doesn't mean they don't deserve to be loved.”

 

 

A slow smile crossed the girl's face as the older woman extended a wink in her direction and walked confidently away, knowing without a shadow of doubt she'd be back through the doors of the county lock up a time or two yet.


End file.
